The Thermonuclear Event Theory….

[Mojave]

This thread is one of a few I plan to post to continue discussions on some common theories that relate to the original peopling of the Americas. Obviously, I have opinions and I invite others to share theirs. Part of my motivation is to gain knowledge and insight that I may lack due to many reasons. I am attempting to be objective and unemotional. Many people are convinced their understanding is correct. Some things I am convinced of, others I’m not sure. If you disagree, fire away. If you want to argue, I’d suggest not taking offense as none is intended.

Several weeks ago Uniface posted a lot of insightful information ((Paleo?) Uniface Tools) on a theory that would explain erroneous carbon dates in the North Central US with the following reference:

TERRESTRIAL EVIDENCE OF A NUCLEAR CATASTROPHE IN PALEOINDIAN TIMES

This information is clearly above my capability to comprehend. I did run it by a couple nuclear physicist friends of mine and said that it was indeed possible, but there would likely be other evidence and it would be known by now outside the world of archaeology. So I concluded that without other disciplines and professions (geophysicists, radio astronomers, geologists, and other earth scientists) making the same conclusions independently, I could not accept it as fact. My nature compels me to follow a strict and rigorous scientific thought process. That precludes me from arguing theories with more theories. Someone referred to “cherry-picking” data recently. This is an example. I think that there possibly is some reason why some carbon dates are erroneous but using that unknown to promote some different theory is compounding conjecture on top of conjecture.
Ultimately, if there was a thermonuclear event significant enough to skew the relative carbon compounds by that much, there would not have been herds of millions of bison that survived for the rest of the subsequent paleo Indians to hunt. There would be lots of other physical evidence that would be known by now as well. But then that is just my opinion.

[blueovalfever]

your opinion seems to match mine...lol. it has to be proven before i can believe it fully.

[Maumee Bay]

I watched a show on PBS the other day on this same subject it seems to me that the space shotgun theory(as I call it) is very convenient.Supposedly it hit up here around the Great Lakes.My gripe is why do we go from paleo to late paleo to plano to transitional then to archaic.You call it cherry picking we call it Buffet theory's pick what you want ignore
the rest.
Paul

[uniface]

there would likely be other evidence and it would be known by now outside the world of archaeology. So I concluded that without other disciplines and professions (geophysicists, radio astronomers, geologists, and other earth scientists) making the same conclusions independently, I could not accept it as fact.

What you do with it is your own affair, and of no interest to anyone else. But in point of fact, it was other scientists that alerted the archaeologists to these events having happened. Neither Firestone nor Topping were/are archaeologists.

if there was a thermonuclear event significant enough to skew the relative carbon compounds by that much, there would not have been herds of millions of bison that survived for the rest of the subsequent paleo Indians to hunt.

Micrometeorite Impacts in Beringian Mammoth Tusks and a Bison Skull

[Mojave]

Well here we go. Despite all my preemptive apologies and proactive attempts to prevent emotional responses and personal criticisms you post this:

Originally Posted by uniface

What you do with it is your own affair, and of no interest to anyone else. But in point of fact, it was other scientists that alerted the archaeologists to these events having happened. Neither Firestone nor Topping were/are archaeologists.

You have some valuable and welcome inputs especially in light of the fact that you originally brought this to this forum. If my comments and opinions have no interest to you please ignore my posts. If you’d like to debate the issues, you are invited.

Now back to the subject, you bring up the fact that the authors are/were not archaeologists. Point well taken and I stand corrected. I didn’t check. The basis of my comments was the result of reading the very first two sentences of the publication quoted here:

“THE PALEOINDIAN OCCUPATION of North America, theoretically the point of entry of the first people to the Americas, is traditionally assumed to have occurred within a short time span beginning at about 12,000 yr B.P. This is inconsistent with much older South American dates of around 32,000 yr B.P.1 and the similarity of the Paleoindian toolkit to Mousterian traditions that disappeared about 30,000 years ago.2”

To me this sounded like I was about to read an archaeological report written by, and for, archaeologists. I’m sorry for my error.

The technical content of the theories however (and in my opinion) doesn’t hold merit. I’ll take a few of the facts stated to make my arguments against. First though I suspect we are confusing a couple separate theories. The original document referenced did not talk about meteorites or comets. I am aware of the theories about a comet that purportedly struck the northern latitudes causing all this mess but that is not what this article is about. If we want to have a separate discussion on comparing photographs of 1 mm micrometeorite impacts, on the metal hull, of a spacecraft, in the vacuum of space, with photographs of the same sort of impact damage on the skull of a bison 56,000 years ago (using their logic of 30,000 year bias on the carbon date caused by the event) after travelling through the entire atmosphere, we can. I think that is kind of odd too.

The original document referred to particles smaller than the 100-200 micron particles they use in their simulations to arrive at a “suggested” entrance velocity:

“Field simulations with control cherts for large particles (100–200 microns) suggest an entrance velocity greater than 0.4 km/s, and experiments at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory indicate that the smaller particles left tracks comparable to about 526 MeV iron ions ( 56 Fe) in Gainey artifacts.”

My argument with the article was related to the nuclear bombardment and atmospheric heating rather than these micrometeorites. Unless we want to entertain the notion that a comet hit the planet at the same time this supernova happened (???) these are (as far as I can tell) separate subjects and theories.

On the heating, if it were caused by radiation from a supernova, the radiation would arrive on earth as plane waves perpendicular to the direction of travel. If the energy hit Earth first at Michigan with sufficient energy to heat the atmosphere to 1000 degrees CELCIUS(!) the same amount of energy would have the same effect across the entire half of the planet facing it at that instant. That means everything on the entire continent would have been vaporized including all plant, animal, and human life. Now if you believe what is very widely accepted that the Folsom culture was only hundreds of years after Clovis due to very little vertical separation, that implies Folsom is also 40,000-50,000 years old (still JUST after Clovis). Where did all the bison come from? They all burned up. If you believe that Folsom was tens of thousands of years post-Clovis, then you have to disregard all the connections between the points styles and the lack of vertical separation. Have they discussed this? Also if the atmosphere above Michigan was 1000 C, the atmosphere on the opposite side of the planet would have been raised at least a few hundreds of degrees. Here is a reference from Lenard at http://www.atlantisquest.com/Asteroid.html:

“Looking at these aspects for the moment, it is indeed interesting that a member of that same team, archeologist Dr. William H. Topping, has since published a paper favoring an intense "solar flare" occuring circa. 12,500 B.P. creating a brief (24-hour) neutron bombardment of North America which not only resulted in various catastrophies, but may have even reset the Carbon-14 clock to indicate younger Paleo-Indian dates--especially northward toward the area of the Great Lakes. (Topping, 2007) If it should turn out that a solar flare was the responsible culprit, the Phaethon-Helios myth may not be far afield.”

Here Topper discussed a 24 hour radiation. That is the whole planet. NOTHING would have survived anywhere. We’d all be extinct. Which is it? There are too many inconsistencies and contradictions.
And oh yeah, there is another reference to Topping being and archaeologist. I guess he should have checked too.

Now on to the micrometeorite part:
From the recent reference:
Micrometeorite Impacts in Beringian Mammoth Tusks and a Bison Skull
The example used from a Siberian bison skull roughly 26,000 years old. Continuing the logic, I’m missing something here. Is that the uncorrected age and it is really 56,000 (I think??)
From the following quote:
“The Fe/Ni and Fe/Ti ratios are comparable to urelite meteorites and are unlike any terrestrial sources.”
Ok, now we are talking about iron meteorites, not nuclear radiation. Did an iron meteorite cause the carbon clock to have a bias somehow? Iron doesn’t come from supernovas. Nuclear radiation doesn’t come from meteorites right - or does it? Previously they stated that the radiation required to shift the carbon also would have raised the temperatures beyond what is survivable. But in this case, the bison survived:
“The bison skull shows evidence of new bone growth over the micrometeorite impact sites indicating the animal survived the bombardment”
They are using this as a supporting argument that the atmosphere reached a thousand degrees Celsius which is all part of the carbon dating being all screwed up? …And the bison survived?

There are multiple competing theories being used to support other theories and unsolved mysteries. This is bad science filled with inconsistencies and contradictions. There is very little in the way of basic engineering common sense in any of this.

Here is an interesting read at Clovis, Black Mats, and Extra-Terrestrials.
It deals with the “black mat” mystery which is interesting and possibly related. This article refers to Firestone: “Firestone et al. argue that the stuff underneath the black mat represents the detritus of an explosive low-density object--a comet--which destablized the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Widespread fires ensued, followed by an accelerated melting of the ice sheet and then a cooling period (the YD), brought on perhaps perhaps by persistent cloudiness. This combination, they claim, led to the megafaunal extinctions and the end of the Clovis big game adaptation.”
But previously he was arguing the supernova thing....

I think it is clear that something happened but it seems to me Topping and Firestone are bouncing around between theories. The comet/asteroid thing is a little more believable than the nuclear radiation supernova thing as far as extinctions go but the theories are mutually exclusive. I’m still stuck on my original opinion that the supernova thing simply doesn’t make sense. The subsequent discussions of micrometeorites are irrelevant to THAT subject. They are opposing theories that do not support each other.

I clearly don’t understand a lot of this. Perhaps someone has more or better insight?

[blueovalfever]

i like reading this post better than watching the races...lol....hope it keeps going

[uniface]

I put that poorly, Mojave. What I was trying to get at is that whether you personally believe in something or not is pretty much a tangent to what happened or may have happened. If we're discussing what you believe and don't believe, there's no discussion possible -- you just tell us what your beliefs are, and that's that.

As you've homed-in on, the exact mechanism is still up in the air at this point. A solar flare, for example, fails to account for the nanodiamonds. It's still unclear exactly what happened -- and happened repeatedly, for that matter. But something obviously did. That's too well documented by now to argue. The same micrometeorite impacts are found in paleoindian chert artifacts from the target area, but they don't in later artifacts of those same cherts.

Trying to paint a complete picture of something we don't understand yet with contemporary physics is like trying to account for population origins with contemporary genetics. Sure, we've come a long way. But if advances in knowledge continue, people 20 years from now are going to laugh at us. It's a work in progress, and necessarily imperfect while it is.